I remember once about 20 years ago I was flying from Rhode Island to my parents' house in Louisiana for Christmas. I had a gorgeous (and expensive) Williams Sonoma bread knife for my mother for Christmas, and it was confiscated. I was livid. And I'm sure someone got a lovely gift out of my misfortune.
I would imagine there's a pretty tight procedure they go through about confiscated goods. Otherwise, they're really setting themselves up for a scandal.
I had a similar sort of experience at about the same time, flying from Tennessee to Rhode Island carrying a box of silver flatware. It was my mother's silver, so I wasn't about to check it with my luggage. I wasn't thinking about the carving knife and, looking back, I really don't blame them for getting upset about it. At the time, though, who could imagine anyone taking over a plane with a pointy thing? My mother was able to carry the knife away and send it to me later, but I'm afraid I gave airport security a boatload of snark. Like, "what, nobody's afraid of being poked with a lobster fork?" I have since learned to be politer to aiport authorities.
I traveled UK-to-US with a British woman nervously smuggling cans of Heinz beans to her expat daughter in the States. That really cracked me up. For weight alone, that was no easy task. But that was the one thing her daughter craved and, odd as it sounds, I don't suppose it's easy get those hideous, runny orange beans in the US, for all Heinz is an American company. Unless maybe you went somplace that supplies beans to school cafeterias or something.
